Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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A Laureate and the King Who Shared His Love of Verse
Unlike recent series of brief books by famous authors about famous subjects — including Penguin Lives, Eminent Lives and American Presidents — the new Jewish Encounters series is not a collection of biographies alone. While many of the planned books are about people — Seth Lipsky will write about Abraham Cahan, Jonathan Wilson about Marc…
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Beyond Klezmer: Jewish Music Today
Nothing signals the arrival of a musical genre like the emergence of a festival circuit. Folk festivals proliferated in the 1950s, rock festivals sprang forth in the ’60s and world music festivals began cropping up in the ’80s. Since its revival in the early ’70s, Jewish music has acquired its own fair share of festivals…
The Latest
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From ‘Wanderers’ by Richard Stern
Each month, in coordination with our reading series in New York, the Forward publishes an excerpt from the work of that month’s series guest or guests. This month, we will feature readings by Richard Stern and Daniel Stolar (for full details, please see sidebar), and the excerpt we have chosen to highlight is from “Wanderers,”…
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Plant Names in Yiddish
‘Di geviksn-velt in yidish,” or, as it is titled in English, “Plant Names in Yiddish,” is a volume of botanical terminology, in part assembled and in part newly coined by Yiddish linguist and scholar Mordkhe Schaechter, that recently has been published by New York’s YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. It is both an impressive work…
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The Case of the Two Sleuths
A chalk outline on the ground. An older gentleman in the worn robes of a scholar paces off the distance from the chalk outline to the nearest city. He is joined by a fellow in a houndstooth coat and deerstalker cap, a calabash meerschaum clenched tightly in his teeth. Moshe: Three hundred forty-one, three hundred…
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This Month at Novel Jews
For decades, Richard Stern has been acclaimed as an American master of the short story. His awards include the Medal of Merit for the Novel, given by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Heartland Prize for 1995’s best work of nonfiction. Daniel Stolar finished two years at the Yale University…
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September 9, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD A group of Jews were shot in the middle of the main street in broad daylight in Kishinev, during the funeral of a Jewish woman who was murdered by hooligans. As the procession made its way to the cemetery, a group of local police began shooting at the mourners,…
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September 2, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD A letter from Lublin, Poland, has arrived in the offices of the Forward, describing a horrific pogrom that occurred a few weeks ago on the night of Tisha B’av. As Jews sat on the floor of the synagogue reciting kinot (elegies) in memory of the destruction of the Temples…
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Gornick’s ‘Attachments,’ Still Fierce
This month, Farrar, Straus and Giroux will republish “Fierce Attachments.” Vivian Gornick’s 1987 memoir. Couldn’t I just say that you must read it? That I am here to insist this book become a banner in the wide world, as it is a banner already in my mind, one I march behind? Gornick’s memoir has that…
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A Little off the Top: The Controversy About Circumcision
Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision From Ancient Judea to Modern America By Leonard B. Glick Oxford University Press, 384 pages, $30. * * *| To put it mildly, circumcision is a delicate subject. It’s almost impossible to discuss the matter without cracking a joke, probably because the ritual makes at least 49% of the population…
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Individuality, Indelibly Expressed
The Tattoo Artist By Jill Ciment Pantheon Books, 224 pages, $23. * * *| The earliest recorded use of the word “tattoo” is found in descriptions of a Tahitian ritual, written by British explorer Captain James Cook during a 1769 voyage through the South Pacific. Imported into English vocabularies to describe the indelible body art…
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